Check this one out

I can't even remember this book at all, though it obviously had a major impact on me at the time.


Eulogy for Forster’s Ruth Howard Wilcox



Panic and Emptiness! Panic and Emptiness!
And if you found a blue snake—
Wait, I’ll start again.
The house was your home
it was you all along
moving through the slums and shillings
And I must ask
No, I must know
how? How did you survive
watching the goblins watching humanity
or perhaps, you are the goblins
so undefinable and weary to behold.
But you were never weary
even as your husband,
miles away,
fucked Jacky as if she were his own feelings
buried and easily forgotten.
And what did you see when you looked
in Meg’s eyes
and why favor her to Helen?
Was it only pity—the knowledge that only
Helen could be true to herself?
Meg succumbed and Forster tried
to justify it in the end
As if a woman could ever really
change a man!
They only end up changing themselves.
After all of Meg’s lofty claims of independence
beyond the grave of marriage
she succumbed to the secondary role.
Forster was trying to make her you.
And you, were you ever secondary?
Not daughter, not wife, not female,
but a house.
A house of Virginia’s own making
sexless—with infinite knowledge
to Bless Miss Avery
and the pendant rusting below
ducks and blue snakes
and the squalor of telegrams and anger
where Jacky lies dazed
and Leonard beats his breasts in Remorse
with a capital “R.”
What would you have taught them?
I am sure you would have condescended
to teach them nothing, as there is nothing
to teach but rather to connect
Something as fundamental as sweet hay
when the Sardonic “family” has hidden
in a house that is not their home,
but rather a fortress in which they
beat their breasts and dutifully dance
their kowtow to society.
Did you cry when your son beat his silly wife?
Did you translate her nonsense to your grandchildren
in hopes that they would grow into houses?
What did you say when he killed the Squalor
that plagued his unspoken “I”?
You could not have known.
But you do—
even now as I sit in my misery,
you knowingly shake your head with a sad smile.
I will never be a house.